New Leopard build released. No, it’s still not finished yet.

A new build of Mac OS X v10.5 is released to developers. Is this thing ever …

Work on Apple's next major operating system continues to plod along with the release of a new build of Leopard to developers this week. According to various rumor sites, build 9A410 doesn't offer that many changes in its official release notes (a revised Terminal application and changes to .Mac sync settings are the highlights), but does include a lengthy list of known glitches that remain in the current build, ranging from QuickTime playback problems to mild graphics corruption on certain models to unspecified issues with FileVault (now there's a reassuring thought). Oh, and those "secret features" everybody's been wondering about? Still not there.

Despite the parade of problems reported in the new build, a little perspective is in order. As one commenter on AppleInsider points out, the most recent Debian GNU/Linux distribution had upwards of 500 tracked bugs just two months prior to its release this week. Granted, that's not a perfect analogy, but it does highlight the fact that outside of Apple it's hard to know what issues are already fixed in later builds of the OS, or what issues are being kept off the publicly-available release notes. Naturally there are also bugs just waiting to be uncovered in this build as well. Despite the apparent lack of progress (six weeks have elapsed since the previous developer build) speculation is beginning to coalesce on June 11 as a possible release date, the opening day of this year's Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco. Of course, there's also the possibility that Apple's other highly-anticipated product introduction for 2007 will take the main stage, but I would expect the iPhone to get its own flashy intro, and see Leopard debut at, you know, a developer conference. I've been wrong before, though.

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